Armed cops in schools may not fly

Massachusetts gun laws, among the most restrictive in the country, could be further tightened under a gun violence reduction bill being pushed by House Speaker Robert DeLeo.

The National Rifle Association is sure to be alarmed by the bill, and it will perhaps lambaste Massachusetts for weakening gun owners' Second Amendment rights.

There is one provision in the bill, however, that should bring cheer to the NRA — the requirement that school districts hire armed police officers.

If you recall, putting an armed guard in every American school was the only solution offered by the NRA leadership in the wake of the tragic and gut-wrenching Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, in which a deranged young man, armed with an assault rifle, rubbed out the lives of 26 children and school staff.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," Wayne LaPierre, the NRA executive director said at the time.

"We need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work. And by that I mean armed security."

A number of states around the country have in fact moved in that direction.

An Education Week analysis of more than 450 school safety bills filed around the country since the Sandy Hook tragedy "found that legislators have proposed solutions that include arming teachers, adding guards or police officers, and shoring up the security of school buildings."

Yet, the prospect of Massachusetts becoming a test case for LaPierre's gun violence solution is a long shot. The idea of armed guards in Massachusetts schools, for one, is something many communities will likely resist.

Worcester School Committee member Jack Foley, for example, is wary of this and similar ideas, such as the suggestion, he said, by some that teachers should be armed.

"We cannot continue with the status quo, the easy-access guns. Kids can get guns almost anywhere, and it is frightening. We work every day to resolve conflicts among kids. We try to manage those conflicts internally. But then there is the outside threat that is random and frightening and devastating to families in school."

Still, Mr. Foley said he doesn't believe it would be practical to put armed guards in schools.

"What message would we be sending to our students?" he asked.

"I don't see us doing that here."

And if fear of guns in schools doesn't scuttle this provision in the bill, its implementation cost could.

The bill says districts shall (subject to appropriation) hire at least one armed police officer to provide law enforcement and security services to elementary and secondary public schools.

Yet, unless the state picks up the tab, a district like Worcester with some 46 school buildings would be hard-pressed to hire one officer, much less to put one in every school, according to Rob Pezzella, the district school safety liaison.

Putting an officer in the city's 30 elementary schools, for example, would cost more than $2 million, Mr. Pezzella said.

"If there is no money attached to the bill, then as it has been with all the other unfunded mandates that we have been given, the burden will fall to the local districts," he said.

It is a burden districts might find impossible to avoid, because now that the state has opened the school door to armed police officers, the price would be many times greater if a gun tragedy were to occur in a district that did not arm its schools.